Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 30th Aug 2007 12:59 UTC, submitted by judgen
"Microsoft partners think it's great that the vendor has been aggressively battling software piracy. But some partners say the task of ensuring that their clients are in compliance with Microsoft's Byzantine software licensing structure is steadily growing more difficult. Making matters worse, several sources told CMP Channel that Microsoft sometimes expects partners to act as foot soldiers in its ongoing campaign against so-called 'unintentional' software piracy by reporting organizations that aren't in compliance, which is threatening their role as trusted advisors to their clients."
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Member since:
2005-07-12
"report when someone is breaking the law."
You should read the article, and pay attention to honest people's concerns.
I work for a small proprietary software company whose product targets Windows (because of it's ubiquity), but it easily connects with and/or interacts with other platforms.
Anyway, I deal with our customers all the time, and they have these exact gripes. They have no idea, most of the time, whether or not they are in full compliance with the licensing terms. They're always getting hit by software audits. They always have to fork out extra money for MS CALS (something that is always conveniently left out in MS sponsored TCO studies).
It is a cold hard fact that businesses have a very hard time staying in compliance with MS's highly complex, draconian licensing.
And MS is by far not the only culprit. Most of the big players are just as bad, if not worse. Oracle, in particular, is horrendously notorious for their heavy handed software audits and attempts to squeeze every last drop of money out of their customer's pockets.
All of which makes me so glad for the existence of open source.
Open source is not without it's licensing complexity. But it is much much better and easier to handle. And the general business plan of open source vendors is to give the software away for free (no licensing), and sign up the customer for paid support.
This is much simpler, and delivers a much much better TCO. The only real compliance issues is redistribution of open source software, which is generally a complete non-issue for most companies.
Edited 2007-08-30 16:27